Monthly Archive August 2012

When I used to live in Toronto’s Kensington Market, I was truly honored to be asked to perform at a benefit concert in support of the beautiful old neighborhood church around the corner from my place – St Stephen’s. The evening’s line-up included Bruce Cockburn, Daniel Lanois, Jane Siberry, and Molly Johnson. The show was professionally recorded, and amazingly is being released 7 years later on True North Records. I performed “The Rose Of Montrose” with Lori Cullen on backing vocals, and naturally “Kensington Market”. It is available on CD and via iTunes.

Here’s the press release:

On Sunday September 18th 2005, a remarkable concert event took place in a small Church in Toronto to rescue one of the most important providers of social assistance to the city’s downtown community in need. After 147 years of servicing one of the poorest neighborhoods in Toronto, the parish of St. Stephen in the fields faced a financial crisis.

Members of the Kensington Market area, politicians, and music industry heavy weights came together to raise money for this iconic church.

Available for the first time, all proceeds will be donated to their ongoing community services including: Georgina House, the first women’s shelter in Toronto (1908); Saint Stephen’s Community House (1960); and a food program that serves 10,000 meals a year to the hungry and homeless.

Here’s a large scale mural that I did recently for Steve Mackinnon’s awesome recording studio. That’s Steve in the foreground and me on the couch with a ukelele. It’s on the canvas of a sound treatment panel, stained with layers of diluted acrylic so to not diminish the function of dampening reflections.

For folks who were listening today to the live recording of my Tom Thomson song-cycle on CBC Radio, the studio album Turpentine Wind is available for download for $5 – go to MUSIC on the main menu, pull down to Discography, and click on the Turpentine Wind image – this will take you to my page on Bandcamp. Here you can download in any format you like including hi-rez.. The deluxe edition with CD, BluRay of animations and an original painting of a WAV file from the vocal tracks is available for $125 plus shipping – please go to STORE on the menu.

This Saturday night, August 4 at 8pm, I’m honored to play a solo gig at Camp Naivelt in Brampton, Ontario. Started in 1925, it has a fascinating history of lefty Jewish culture, with prominent musicians such as Zal Yanofsky, Phil Ochs, and Pete Seeger performing there. I’ll throw in a couple of tunes by my fave Jewish lefty composer, Burt Bacharach.